Download Addiction
 

Inspired by this thread.


We've all heard of net addiction, and even porn addiction. I wanted to know if anyone here has had download addiction and if you beat it what did you do to do it? You don't have to say what you downloaded; it's more about the compulsion to acquire content and being unable to say no to it, whatever it is.


I have recently broken my compulsion to dl various types of content, much to the happiness of my ISP I'm sure. I still dl a fair bit of stuff but it isn't an overriding need like it has been. I slowly just got bored of collecting all of it and wanted to do something more interesting.

A big help was the purchase of my digicam. I now have an extension of my computer to take outside with me and spend time with while at the same time indulging in another interest-amateur photography. My pics aren't earth-shaterringly great and my cam is only a 2 Megapixel but I enjoy capturing life and things I like to see. It's really broken the rut I was in with compulsive downloading.


Have you been addicted to colllecting content online? Did you break the chain, and how?

Back before Napster, my boss knew when I came into work, because I maxed out the bandwidth (on the T-1 they had), and kept it slammed till I left. Did this for well over a year. Back then it was simply full albums. Averaged 1-2 gigs a day. Quickly filled up 80 gigs with just music, and had a PC at home simply devoted to playing the whole list in random order, and I could turn on the stereo and listen. Then, lost the hardrive (fuckin' IBM DeathStar drive). And well, after losing that drive and all the "hard-earned" data that took so much time to gather I pretty much gave up. Was fun while it lasted, but after you realize you have "everything" gets old quick.

I'll admit, I'm definately a download addict. I guess the biggest reason as everything I get rarely ever holds my attention for very long, so I'm in a constant process of deleting and downloading. I might not be nearly as bad as I was a year back or so... then I was doing nearly 1-2GB a day....

I guess the other thing that slowed me down was the fact that I started working again. Unemployment was VERY VERY boring.

I was untill i maxed my 80 and 120 gig hard drvies. now i do it more moderatly.

I can't develop a download addiction since I have 56k. Kind of hard to have one when it takes a hell of a long time to download anything. But knowing myself I know if I were to get dsl I'd become a download addict.

I was when I first moved from my parents' old computer and 33.6 dialup to college and my own machine and the high speek network there. Couldn't help myself, I only had a 10 Gig HD, but I was burnin' CDs as fast as I could download. My HD was like a holding zone before it went to CD, fragged it like nothing else but I couldn't stop. It faded over the next year, and now I hardly download anything anymore...

I have 75 GB across 3 HDDs and I have the exact same problem you did. :o

I have to be downloading to sleep, it's sad.

yeah... IRC can be a bitch
during the summer, I would fill up all my space on my 3 comps.. over 150 GB.... and i burn a lot while downloading too

I just deleted a lot of it later.

Don't ask me man I'm the one with the entire quantum Leap series freshly downloaded to a 80 gb hard drive with 12 gb left. thank god for my dvd burner!

i am a packrat
i download everything i see
i got a gig or pdf's unopened
3 out of 15gb of unlistened usic
10 out of 50gb unplayed/unfinished games
6gb of unseen anime :(
+ kazaa woorks at a max of 5kbps for me :(
bless my cdburner

The first couple months that I got high speed internet I was dling games, mp3s, software, movies, and whatnot for WAY too many hours a day, went from an 8gb to a 60+8gb and now a 120+60gb hardrive setup, it became kind of boring after a while though and I eventually got it down to a manageable number, where I'll only get stuff I'm seriously interested in.

As a side note I'm totally addicted to finding unusual stuff to do with my time lately, the How-To section is a really interesting place :D

I got a total of 600GB in my computer, 5 120GB hd and i filled it up less then a year. yea i'm a download addict but i have to use my bandwidth, i'm paying $50 a month not just for web surfing. i can live for a week without download anything, but more than that, i feel like my bandwidth is getting waste, so i have to dl again. can't waste my bandwidth since many people doesn't got the previlege of high speed internet like i do, just like food, can't waste them because people are starving. i gotta go.

hrm...yeah I d/l a fair bit...(~15-20 gigs/week? btwn me + bf)..

but it's very selective. honest! :)

we've got a dvd burner, so the bulk of it is dvdr's.

Addiction? nah...just utilising our full bwidth i guess :p

:eek: Quantum Leap! :D Sweet dude, congrats! :)

Let's just say I possess many things which I've never even tried playing, using, listening to, watching, or whatever.

Yeap. The sad thing is I'm on 56k, so the downloading is slooooow... But yeah, I download stuff 23/7, or so, plus the occasional reboot after an install, and somesuch. I almost freak out if I forget to make sure that the comp has something to dl while I'm out/asleep. Sick.

Yeah, I d/l stuff pretty much constantly. I too am on 56k. The computer is on even while i'm at work, or while i sleep. I do not get all that worked up when the isp disconnects (Yay, d/l managers). This was not always the case.

i download alot. always on irce and dc++
its kinda like crack

I've done that so many times. I'd already be up about an hour past when I shoulda gone to bed and I'd have to go to a content index site or whatever and make sure I was runnning something during sleep. I've really tapered off tho-like someone said it gets a bit boring when you have everything already.

I downloaded a music creation software suite recently. I played with it enough to get approximately seven notes from it. It's now sitting in the CD folder with the voice-to-text application that I didn't even re-install after my last crash.

i am somewhat compulsive about saving/dloading anything having to do with porn, doesnt matter if its good or not, i just save it and never see it again... the only thing that keeps me from filling up my hard drive is the fact that im on dial up. i have soo much crap on my hard drive i could open a nice lil porn site...

yea my 2.0 MP digicam keeps me busy a lil bit, that and i have been drawing a lot lately.

Add me to the list. I was doing ok until I got into Bit Torrent and that ruined me again.

I'm not so much an addict but I do download like a sailor. What I mean is, here in Australia (with our IT infrastructure :rolleyes: ) I am on 512 adsl capped to 8 Gigs download a month. If I go over, the connection is throttled to 56k for the rest of the month.

So - like a sailor who earns money out at sea but can't spend it - I bide my time at the beginning nabbing uncapped P2P content off other aussies on the local pipe network (playing cards) until the very end of the month (shore leave) when I go completely mad downloading as much divx anime and mp3 as I can get.

i'm very much addicted to the net--and the tfp pics have clogged up waay too much of my hard drive space. so i'm giving up the internet for lent. wish me luck!

Was a porn addict in my teens. I would download my hd in one day! (about 5 gigs back then) I now just download music and games.

That is where having a 56k connection comes in really handy. The slowness of the download ensures that Red Hat will release a new version of Linux before you're done downloading the previous one.